Tuesday, August 31, 2004

"The radiation dose from a full-body CT scan is comparable to the doses received by some of the atomic-bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where there is clear evidence of increased cancer risk,'' said David Brenner, professor of radiation oncology at Columbia University in New York City...

...Brenner found that a 45-year-old who had one of the high-tech X-rays - which deliver much larger radiation doses than normal scans - would increase his cancer risk by .08 percent. That translates to about one more cancer case for every 1,200 people.

But for a 45-year-old who gets a scan every year for 30 years, the risk would rise to 1.9 percent, or almost one in 50, Brenner said.

That's still a small individual risk, but probably not worth taking for the limited value of these whole body scans. Despite the advertising hype, there are few conditions that they can detect early enough to save lives. And they have far too many false positive results.